The Dark and Stormy cocktail is one of my all-time favorites. Dale DeGroff’s recipe is this:

2 ounces Gosling’s or Myers’s dark rum

5 ounces ginger beer

Lime wedge

Pour the rum over ice in highball and fill with ginger beer. Squeeze in the lime wedge.

Gosling’s Black Seal 80 proof is definitely the rum you want. For ginger beer, I’ve had good luck with Reed’s Extra Ginger Brew and Regatta. I use more lime in mine – I squeeze the juice from 1/2 lime and shake it with the rum and ice, before pouring over rocks and adding the ginger beer. A little salt is also tasty.

Thanks to Marymount School, our bar will have a beer and wine license only. I do plan on having a full list of low-proof cocktails, however, which brings us to the point of this post. Our list will most certainly have a take on the D and S.

Experimenting with some tawny Ports - Niepoort and Warre's Otima 10.

The Niepoort, while delicious, proved to have too much grape-y sweetness. The Warre’s, mixed with the same proportions discussed above, would make most D and S fans smile.

Even the color of the Warre's was closer to the original.

Bermuda is far from Portugal and 40% abv vs. 20% abv is quite a jump, but the complexity from barrel aging and the natural sweetness found in both main ingredients makes it work.